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The State Department of Transportation will hold two public meetings this month to discuss the update plans for the renovation or replacement of the Kosciusko Bridge, which spans Newtown Creek, connecting Queens with Brooklyn.

For the last four years the DOT and the Federal Highway Administration have studied a range of 26 plans that ran the gamut from doing nothing to widening the existing bridge to rebuilding and even replacing the whole thing with a tunnel.

This week the agencies released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the plan, and have narrowed the field to six choices: the first is a no-build option, which would require major work to be done in six years; the next two plans would each widen the existing bridge, take just under four years, cost $559 million or $515 million, and add a total of three lanes of traffic; and the final three options would replace the bridge entirely, take five to six years to complete, cost between $630 million and $712 million and also add three lanes of traffic.

The Department of Transportation has pulled out all the stops with the Kosciusko Bridge project. The aging bridge – a six-lane, 1.1- mile, tightly-packed overpass that joins the B and Q on the BQE – has been plagued with maintenance problems for years and badly needs to be replaced or repaired, according to transportation officials.

Opened in 1939, the bridge was named after Taduesz Kosciusko, a Polish general in the American Revolutionary War. The two bridge towers are mounted with eagles, one a Polish Eagle and the other an American Eagle.

Officials began a public scoping process in 2002, meeting with local officials and residents to determine the important social, economic and environmental considerations involved in the project.

A final EIS will then be issued later in the year, shortly after which the DOT will announce which proposal it ultimately selected.

No actual construction will begin on the project until 2011, according to the DOT Web site. In the interim period, the agency is conducting a $12 million rehabilitation of the bridges superstructure and deck.

The public hearings are scheduled for Thursday, April 19, at the Polish National Home, 261 Driggs Ave. in Greenpoint, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Queens public hearing will be held Thursday, April 26, at the DeVry Institute of Technology, 30-20 Thomson Ave., Room 301, in Long Island City from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The open house will begin at 10 a.m.

Copies of the plan are available online at www.nysdot.gov, and are also available in the Maspeth and Sunnyside branches of the Queens Library, the Queens Borough President’s office and the offices of Community Boards 2 and 5.